Trying
by chivalrysdead
Summary: It is harder to love Marissa but Ryan tries all the same.


**Title**: Trying  
**Author**: Emily   
**Rating**: R  
**Pairings**: Ryan/Marissa, Ryan/Theresa  
**Summary**: "It is harder to love Marissa but he tries all the same."  
**Spoilers/Timeline**: Set sometime before "The Girlfriend"  
**AN**: First O.C fic and any comments or feedback would be much appreciated.

She laughs and mock pouts. Girls like Marissa pout and frown and giggle, Ryan reminds himself of that. They don't want a hard fuck against an alley wall. They want flowers and romance. But Marissa is wasted on vodka and whatever else she drank and Ryan is not so sure. Maybe he has been wanting to push her up against a wall since he first saw her standing there in her driveway or maybe he just wants to love her gently to death.

Pushing her up against a wall would be so much easier.

Girls like Summer, he can understand. Summer got wasted for fun and wrapped herself around him. Marissa, on the other hand, he cannot fathom. She does not get wasted for fun and sometimes when she wraps her arms around him it seems like he's the one solid thing in her world. Ryan is used to being needed and so he wraps his arms back around her and murmurs brief words. He doesn't need her, and that's not her fault. She's not lacking in some way, it's just that he has never really needed anyone. Way back when he did they betrayed him and so Ryan refuses to need anymore. He doesn't plan on starting now.

It's not personal, he wants to tell her. We should end this before someone gets hurt, he wants to tell her. But she's pretty when she pouts and giggles and he can't quite bring himself to do it. Marissa is Newport and high society but she likes to smoke cigarettes and he thinks maybe she wouldn't mind making out in the back of a car, or against an alley wall.

She asks what Chino is like as though it's some magical place where everything is simple and perfect. But Chino is just like Newport Beach, everyone is coming undone. He isn't fooled by her exterior, Marissa too is slowly shattering. He wonders if she's pretty when she breaks. He doesn't think he wants to be around then. It will be messy and Ryan has enough of his own mess to deal with already. He is used to picking up the pieces and part of him is already preparing to pick up the pieces of Marissa when she shatters.

For now, he pretends like they could be together and imagines what it would be like to kiss her. He doesn't think about the fallout. Marissa talks to him about music as if it's the most important thing in the world. She tells him that some singer in some band has the most fuckable voice ever. He has not heard her swear before and he likes the way she says "fuck". She gives him an earphone and they lie on the bed, music filling one ear, her leg firm against his. They lie sprawled there, just listening to the music and their breathing and Ryan thinks he gets why music is so important to her.

In retrospect he thinks that it's just an illusion that helps Marissa feel better for a while.

Marissa shyly calls him "Ry" because she has heard Seth call him it. He calls her Marissa because he has no other name for her.

She is impossible to abbreviate and that seems to make her that little bit harder to love.

He thinks of Theresa and how he used to casually wrap an arm around her waist, touching the gap of tanned skin between her jeans and her top. That was easy and that was then. She was sunshine and always at ease; he didn't have to try. Casual in Chino was genuine casual, not the faux casual that embodies Newport. It wasn't some magical place of course but when he thinks about it, he remembers the good parts.

Ryan packed up and left Chino anyway though and this is his new world that he will just have to get used to.

It is harder to love Marissa but he tries all the same.

He collects facts about her. Her favourite ice cream is banana. She alphabeticises her CD's and likes to think she is in control. There's a desperation lying beneath her calm exterior. Her mother had always wanted more from her than she has to give. She likes to wear skirts. She keeps a bottle of vodka in the cupboard where she keeps her shoes.

She confesses to him that she has never slept with Luke and Ryan wonders why she is telling him this. He's sure she has some ulterior motive, because everyone does, but then he considers that maybe she is just a lost girl with more teenage angst than usual. She is the girl next door now but she's also everything that he is not. She is from here and he is from there and he wishes it were easy.

He is sure Marissa wants fancy parties and dinners at restaurants because nothing at Newport is casual. He thinks she would look down on just walking along the beach and hanging around, joking and teasing. While they hang out now, Ryan thinks this is just the stage before. The friendship stage that is not in fact casual at all because they both know that they will be more than friends. He knows it's all going to change.

But then Marissa cries about her dad and she doesn't wear makeup. She is a little bit of a wreck and so much more real. She does not drop teasing comments and Ryan considers that like any other lost girl, she only wants to be loved. And so he tries.


End file.
